The final ruin of Fort Hensel was accomplished by a shell which penetrated through the thickest of its steel and concrete layers and exploded in its ammunition magazine. This bombardment of Malborghetto necessitated firing mortar shells at a high angle completely over mountains which hid the target from the Italian gunners. The work of destruction was slow owing to the fact that mists often curtained the mountain tops and forced the gunners to cease operations, because to fire while the observers were unable to watch every shot and telephone the results would have been only a waste of ammunition.
But the Austrians already knew that their forts were no match for 12-inch howitzers, once these great guns could get into position, and they had prepared another method of defense which they put into use as soon as the forts were destroyed. Batteries of Skodas, hidden in a stretch of pasture land below the summit of the mountain, were brought up and placed in pits concealed by tufts of grass and brush from reconnoitering airmen, while at a safe distance dummy guns were displayed to draw the Italians' fire. Thus one of the greatest artillery duels of the whole front continued day after day, neither side being able to see the enemy and relying for information upon observers posted on mountain tops and in aeroplanes. These 12-inch guns were not intended for such work. They had been laboriously hauled to their lofty emplacements five and six thousand feet above sea level to destroy 6-inch batteries, as these 6-inch guns had been brought up to overpower the lighter 3-inch mountain guns, some of which the Italians worked from peaks as high as 10,000 feet. When both sides got these monster howitzers into position the natural sequence was a deadlock. The most the infantry could do was to drive the enemy's troops from summits valuable as observation points in the service of the heavy artillery.
Thus the official reports issued by the Austrian and Italian staff headquarters reiterated the names of peaks hitherto unknown to the traveler and tourist mountaineer, peaks which became of immense importance now, not so much on account of their height as because they commanded the best views of the surrounding territory. One of these was Freikofel. The Alpini captured it early in the war with scarcely a struggle and then for weeks the Austrians sacrificed regiments and even brigades in vain attempts to recover it.
The loss of Freikofel by the Austrians was followed, on June 24, 1915, by the loss of Cresta Verde, and then in the first week of July the Italians captured the important observation peak of Zellenkofel. This mountain was held by the Austrians with a force of only forty men, but in view of its extraordinary position this squad was considered sufficient. The slopes below them were swept by a battery of their mountain guns, in telephonic communication with the more distant howitzer battery upon which it could call for assistance if necessity arose, and a large infantry reserve was stationed in the wooded valley below. But one night twenty-nine Alpini crept up the almost sheer precipice a thousand feet high that separated them from the Austrian defenders. They carried ropes and a machine gun and just as the moon rose they attained the summit, set up their Maxim and opened fire. Every man in the observation station was shot down.
Then followed a desperate fight with the Austrian mountain battery on the reverse slope. But thanks to their machine gun the Italians were able to break up the enemy's charge and as day broke they captured the Austrians' guns and drove the men who served them down the mountain. When the Austrian reserves arrived the Italians had intrenched themselves on the southern slope and were able to make use of the captured guns. The attacks of the reserves were repulsed and the Italians held the mountain.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER LXIX
MORE MOUNTAIN FIGHTING—RESULTS OF FIRST CAMPAIGN
At the western end of the rugged battle front, the Italian mountain troops, after the first advance, were less successful than the troops of Cadorna in the Carnic and Julian Alps. Here the fighting mountaineers of Tyrol redeemed their reputation by a daring stroke. The scene of this brilliant operation was close above the Tonale Pass, the site of one of the greatest glaciers in Europe. From Presanella to Care the ice extends in a gleaming crescent for more than twenty miles. Its broadest part stretches for six miles to Monte Adamello, 11,640 feet high. The paths over or by these glaciers had been seized and fortified by the Italians and their line along this front lay mostly within Italian territory. In mid-July a force of Tyroleans found a new track through the ice and before the Italians, engrossed with operations elsewhere, knew what they were doing they had penetrated several miles into Italian lands. The Italians met the invaders at the famous Garibaldi Hut owned by the Italian Alpine Club just beneath Mount Adamello and checked the advance, although the Austrians retained some of the peaks commanding the Hut.
Just north of the Adamello group of peaks in the upper part of the Giudicari Valley extending to Lake Garda the Italians took one of the northern passes by surprise and advanced toward the forts defending Riva and Arco. Eventually they won all the country south of the Ledro Valley with a series of fierce artillery duels. A similar advance was made east of Lake Garda and down the Lagarina Valley. The forward movement was signalized by engineering feats comparable, in their mastery of the human hand over the forces of nature, only to the building of the Pyramids. The great siege guns weighing many tons were hoisted to the top of cloud-piercing summits solely by man power. Every bit of ammunition and supplies had to be brought up by the same laborious method. At Col di Lana the Austrians had an intricate series of works excavated deep in the solid rock. High explosive shells and hand bombs were useless against this defense, but Colonel Garibaldi, a grandson of the great Italian Liberator, found a way to drive the Austrians out of their position. He mustered a corps of engineers who had helped drill the great railway tunnels on the Swiss frontier and under his direction they tunneled right through the mountain into the Austrian galleries on the reverse slope. When the fumes of the last charge of blasting dynamite cleared away a detachment of bomb carriers leaped through the jagged hole, drove the enemy from their galleries, and, constantly fed by supporting troops, cleared their way up and down the mountain.
The first of August, 1915, found the Italians holding the Austrian outpost positions they had taken during June and July; but the Austrian main defenses from one end of the frontier to the other, a distance of more than 300 miles, were virtually intact. It must be borne in mind, however, that the Italian General Staff at this period of the war never contemplated any general offensive except on the Isonzo River. Although their attack along the Isonzo did not attain its object of reducing the main defenses of Trieste and Gorizia, proved too hard a nut to crack, the Italians here won a series of minor victories against great odds and, to the Italian mind at least, demonstrated the valor of the army and the effectiveness of the new artillery which boded well for the future.